Linux Blog

Until today I had never installed PostgreSQL from the Binary provided at postgresql.org since it’s pretty much always in some form of repository provided by most distributions. Today, for the first time ever I installed it and have to say I’m very impressed with the installer. I some what shuddered as I saw a “install shield” type installer interface, as my past encounters with these have generally tended to not work out so well. What I noticed about the PostgreSQL installer though was different from the “install shield”, it was BitRock. BitRock is a cross platform installer for “Windows, Linux, OS X and more…” as this was my first experience with BitRock with a Linux machine I have to say it was a positive one. It allowed me to install PostgreSQL with some custom components pretty effortlessly. While most won’t need to do a custom installation as PostgreSQL will probably be in a repository, its handy to know that the installer works.

BitRock does not appear to have a completely free license but they do seem to give open source projects a “free copy.” Not sure how I feel about this, but I guess if they’re out to make money then it could work for them. Apparentely it doesn’t take much to please me on a mundane Monday morning, I’d have been perfectly fine with a tarball and manual configuration but the GUI has brightened up my day. Thanks BitRock! Does any one else have any encounters or shocking experience with installers? What about BitRock in general?

I was using a piece of software that I had heard about a while back that manages collections. Its called Tellico and is actually quite good. While using Tellico I discovered that when you click on the “Amazon link” for the product, it has an affiliate code in it.

For those of you who don’t know what an affiliate program is, its basically a way for people to make money just by refering people to products. Most of the big guys have these sorts of “programs” including Amazon. Affiliate programs are very popular in the triple X industry.

What frustrates me is that this is included in Tellico, so in effect when you visit a product from your own personal collection, Tellico gets a percentage of sales from Amazon for any other items you purchase. While the affiliate link doesn’t bother me so much as it can be changed (and I also participate in the program), its the fact that it came right out of the Fedora repositories like this.

What about if Ubuntu reworked its software and included affiliate links for everything? Perhaps a FireFox plugin that manipulated all Amazon requests to include Mandriva’s affiliate link. I think that this is against Amazons terms of service but this method is a potential way for open source developers and organizations to get some additional funding. But is it right? Preying on your end users ignorance for profit? Although it doesn’t harm anything is it moral?

Now, it states that voip for apps on the iPhone could only be used if cost is an issue. I think that voip on phones is a good idea, even if voip is not on phones it can still be implemented very well. They state that 35 GBP will get you 10 hours of talk time, while this seems like a lot, how much international time is that? With an Asterisk box one can easily set up a voip trunk that would allow its owner to dial in and call internationally for the cell cost of local minutes and the cost of the voip provider. This could potentially save a lot of money.

With every plan, you get unlimited data. If you only get 450 minutes with your plan, you could use a native application with unlimited data to talk more. I’ve also thought about creating “push-to-talk” PTT, sort of like the other walkie talkie services offered. If you could do this with Voip, it wouldn’t be limited to cell phones like the other major services are, people at their laptops or desktops could also participate where cell phone coverage isn’t available.

I’d like to see more people take advantage of Asterisk and start creating innovative phone services. I don’t think that having an application that utilizes VoIP would necessarily be a bad thing. I actually think that VoIP on the iPhone is a good idea and will continue to do so until it starts interfering with the providers income and in result interfering my bill.

You have to admire the open source community. With such a diverse group of people all kinds of things can happen. One thing that cracked me up today was the language used in the NetBeans project (see image.)

I’m a big fan of the project don’t get me wrong, I just thought it was funny. I actually have a personal encounter with something similar when I was the developing a project. I was coding some error handling procedures on a website where all invalid input (temporarily) got directed to an obnoxious error page that read “Error!” with a bright yellow background and black text. When a end user accidentally typed a url in wrong it created the error. Since this website was for a bunch of writers they didn’t like this too much, so they picked on me until it was fixed.

This is part of the problem with the open source community. When an application is created often not enough thought is put into the interface and terminology used or the thought process of the low tech end user. It is different when a company develops an application because they can spend money on designers, interface experts and writers. In the open source community there is a lack of resources and collaboration to make this happen.

Even with well established organizations like Tigris (subversion) cryptic messages that appear in certain products can be difficult to decipher for problems as simple as permissions issues.

I don’t think it is a good idea for every one to “wait a while” to solve this problem because its not going to fix its self. So in closing I propose the question:

I made a tweet yesterday about how once every so often I get obsessed with certifications. Even though I normally get around to studying let alone sitting the test. I was wondering if this is a problem for any one else. Certifications to me are so tempting, but finding the time to actually do it is another thing. If there is an multiple choice exam for a certification given time any one can take the test, so why isn’t every one qualified?

I can’t speak for every one but I know why I don’t hold as many certifications as I would like.

1) Money
Firstly money comes into play. Even if you self study, buy books or from reading free certification guides and objectives online you still have to pay for the exam. This is a big factor when coming to get certified. Even if sponsorship from an employer or other organization is available this can still be a problem.

2) Time
I for one do not like to fail exams, therefore I like to study to make sure I’ll pass. Making the time needed to study for an exam is often a challenge. Things come up which distract me from studying, or scheduling an exam.

3) Return
This is one of the major reasons for obtaining a certification. Whats in it for me? After all why am I going to get a certification if it is no benefit to me. The return on some certifications is not measurable. Its hard to look into the future and say,
“Wow, it was a good job I got Linux+ certified”
When or if the time comes for a job change certification’s are a great tool, even if they are not well respected in the industry. For example take MCSA and LPIC, if a systems administrator holds just one of these certifications and is applying for a position that requires Linux and Microsoft experience, their chances of getting assessed for the position by human resources would be less than the chances of one who has both. I also think that the return is a major reason I don’t hold more certifications. If everyone knew that taking an exam would be of great benefit who wouldn’t study and sit an exam?

Some people say that most certifications are a waste of time, but I don’t think that they are if all of the above factors are reasonable. Any one else have thoughts?

I posted a Linux Video Tutorial on How to Partition Slackware earlier this morning. This is a follow up post, basically the point is I think that I’m going to test the waters in creating Linux Video Tutorials. A certain amount of effort goes into creating these videos and since I’m no video editing whiz it will probably be a slow building category. I’d like as much support as possible with this, those around me seem to think that it could do well and are impressed with the results but unfortunately when I upload them to YouTube its a different story. The quality of the How to partition Slackware video very poor. So in retaliation I am working on getting the necessary bandwidth to support high resolution videos. Stay Tuned for more information on these Linux Video Tutorials!

In other news January 2008 has been the best month for me so far. I would like to take a moment to thank everybody that visits on a regular basis for reading and ask for more comments. I havn’t made any money from this site yet (and nor do I plan to make masses) but feedback is always appreciated.

I’m looking for people to help with the daily blogging on Linux technologies so, if your interested shoot me an e-mail at owen -at- thelinuxblog.com

Zend Studio is a really good PHP IDE for Linux well worth the money. Although it has a high price tag this doesn’t mean that its bug free. I some times have little quirks with it but they seem to have been fixed since I added more ram. Anyway recently while I was trying to use Zend it just would not open. I had to use another PHP IDE on my Linux box until I could figure out the problem. Well, the problem was:

This Application has Unexpectedly Quit: Invocation of this Java Application has caused an InvocationTargetException. This application will now exit. (LAX)

Reinstalling Zend does not fix the issue. The issue seems to be in the configuration directory. All you have to do to fix this issue is:

rm-r ZDE

I’d make a back up first if I were you, just incase, but mine was broken and I didn’t really have anything in the config directory except some saved urls so I just deleted it. Now my Zend Studio works like it used to again! Hurray!, Now I hope it wont do this again for another 6 months or so.

I’d just like to say I’ve been busy over the past week or two with some projects at work and with the holiday season so I haven’t had the time to dedicated to this blog.

Its been a good year at the Linux Blog, I’ve increased traffic since I’ve started and have been beginning to see more activity with comments. I have a couple of goals for the upcoming year.

Firstly I’d like to make some money with Google ads. This isn’t specifically related to the Linux Blog but every little counts. I want to do this because I think that this site has some value to those that use it and I would like to be rewarded for my hard work.

Another goal I have is to write more posts than I did this year. It shouldn’t be hard to do since I stopped writing for a long time in 2007. From about Jan to July. I have a long list of posts to write but I need to know what topics people want to read about.

I have a list of articles to write for the Shell Scripting Sundays column but haven’t got enough ideas for the year yet. I may be able to get a few more if I split some of the more intense ones up but I’d rather keep them simple. If any one has any ideas for articles please let me know.

Thats going to be all for this year, I hope you enjoyed reading my blog and continue to visit me in the new year. For those that do